Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Here in SoSGville, we have a slightly untraditional take on March Madness. Instead of filling out brackets, four of us (Sax, Pedro, EK, Orel) draft 16 teams each. Drafting teams instead of picking games makes for somewhat of a "Calcutta"-style tournament, allowing players to root for teams to progress through the tournament rather than root for outcomes of specific games. And it always leads to conflicts when you're pulling for one of the teams in your stable, but you hate them otherwise (e.g., Duke); it also allows for a requisite degree of trash-talking in situations like when EK's Butler mounted Pedro's Cougar (usually it's the cougar who is on the prowl, right?).

Half the (theoretical, ahem) pot goes to whoever owns the tournament champion, and half goes to whoever has the most total wins (and we credit first-round games with the same score as later-round games). We also award minor "booby prizes" thrown in for biggest upset winner (by seed) and biggest blowout loser (by points). We draft in reverse order of the previous year's winners, and this is how things shook out this year (by selection order):

Since EK wasn't available to participate in tonight's conference call draft, he submitted a preference list. Hence, (1) he was unable to make on-the-fly drafting decisions based on his previous picks, and (2) he ended up with Duke. The consensus among us remaining three players is that EK had the best draft, and he didn't even have to pick up the phone.

What do you think?

Who will win the TOURNAMENT CHAMPION prize in the SoSG March Madness Pool?

Um...what? Wait should I try to check it out again? Whatever. Go Bruins. How about Enberg last night? "Mississippi Valley State came all the way to Anaheim to find Love!" Awesome. Maybe around the Elite Eight you guys could re-explain? I'm not that smart.